Many times, you just want to get a few specific politicians out of the way. Maybe they are on a specific committee, or are deferred to because of perceived domain expertise, or whatever. BribeWell’s business model isn’t likely to work here—it’s just not believable that (e.g.) a Wisconsin politician suddenly had a come-to-Qualy moment and is going to start championing pro-vegan legislation.
The traditional means of getting rid of politicians is expensive and doubtful—financing a serious competitor takes massive coin, and re-election rates are rather high. On the other hand, creating scandals can be a very cost-effective way to get rid of one’s political enemies. Consider ABSCAM, which netted seven members of Congress (including a senator). Unfortunately, that “led to stronger rules and safeguards on these kinds of investigations within the FBI.” In other words, the politicians’ complaints weakened the ability of law enforcement to run similar stings. Since then, if a politician is caught with freezers full of cash, we usually haven’t learned that from proactive attempts to rid ourselves of bribe-taking politicians.
BribeEvenBetter will use false-flag operations to bribe politicians whose continued tenure in office is particularly net-harmful, and then ensure that selected knowledge of the bribe reaches the right ears in law enforcement, media, social-media influencers, and/or the general public. The theory of change involves those lawmakers resigning, being expelled, and/or being sent to prison. At a minimum, they should be marginalized and rendered less harmful. One drawback is that Congress seems to be very hesitant to expel its own, although recent events show that it will still do so if the optics are terrible enough.
Further research is urgently needed to determine whether to use the old standby cover stories (generally private individuals seeking official acts that make them more money) or whether we should try to further increase impact by establishing false-flag entities that appear to be aligned with an adversary (e.g., AI acceleration efforts, big ag). The latter approach does seem high risk, so perhaps sticking with the tried-and-true is best for now.[1]
Although the satirical tone is hopefully obvious, I have seriously thought that there should be regular attempts to bribe senior government officials. If someone is amenable to bribes, the public should know that. And I want any public official who is offered a bribe to worry that it is actually part of a sting operation!
So BribeEvenBetter will serve the public interest more generally by rooting out bribable politicians. However, it will probably lose efficacy as knowledge of its interventions grows amongst the political class (and it removes the most suspectable politicians). We need to start researching interventions to counter this effect now, before it happens.
Oh, another stellar contribution! I mean, if their reluctance to bribes generalizes to our adversaries, then that’s some positive externallity; but the downside risk of adversaries getting to do all the “Bribin’ ” (as we call it in the biz) and us doing none is too high. Still, “if none of your prospects ended up in jail, your “funding” bar was too high”, as the saying goes! Maybe we just do BribeWell, and simultaneously run a secret market for how much money we could get paid if we revealed our transactions, allowing us to “cash-out” when we see a high enough impact opportunity (bribing AGI for example).
Well done; but what if we can BribeEvenBetter?
Many times, you just want to get a few specific politicians out of the way. Maybe they are on a specific committee, or are deferred to because of perceived domain expertise, or whatever. BribeWell’s business model isn’t likely to work here—it’s just not believable that (e.g.) a Wisconsin politician suddenly had a come-to-Qualy moment and is going to start championing pro-vegan legislation.
The traditional means of getting rid of politicians is expensive and doubtful—financing a serious competitor takes massive coin, and re-election rates are rather high. On the other hand, creating scandals can be a very cost-effective way to get rid of one’s political enemies. Consider ABSCAM, which netted seven members of Congress (including a senator). Unfortunately, that “led to stronger rules and safeguards on these kinds of investigations within the FBI.” In other words, the politicians’ complaints weakened the ability of law enforcement to run similar stings. Since then, if a politician is caught with freezers full of cash, we usually haven’t learned that from proactive attempts to rid ourselves of bribe-taking politicians.
BribeEvenBetter will use false-flag operations to bribe politicians whose continued tenure in office is particularly net-harmful, and then ensure that selected knowledge of the bribe reaches the right ears in law enforcement, media, social-media influencers, and/or the general public. The theory of change involves those lawmakers resigning, being expelled, and/or being sent to prison. At a minimum, they should be marginalized and rendered less harmful. One drawback is that Congress seems to be very hesitant to expel its own, although recent events show that it will still do so if the optics are terrible enough.
Further research is urgently needed to determine whether to use the old standby cover stories (generally private individuals seeking official acts that make them more money) or whether we should try to further increase impact by establishing false-flag entities that appear to be aligned with an adversary (e.g., AI acceleration efforts, big ag). The latter approach does seem high risk, so perhaps sticking with the tried-and-true is best for now.[1]
Although the satirical tone is hopefully obvious, I have seriously thought that there should be regular attempts to bribe senior government officials. If someone is amenable to bribes, the public should know that. And I want any public official who is offered a bribe to worry that it is actually part of a sting operation!
So BribeEvenBetter will serve the public interest more generally by rooting out bribable politicians. However, it will probably lose efficacy as knowledge of its interventions grows amongst the political class (and it removes the most suspectable politicians). We need to start researching interventions to counter this effect now, before it happens.
Oh, another stellar contribution! I mean, if their reluctance to bribes generalizes to our adversaries, then that’s some positive externallity; but the downside risk of adversaries getting to do all the “Bribin’ ” (as we call it in the biz) and us doing none is too high. Still, “if none of your prospects ended up in jail, your “funding” bar was too high”, as the saying goes! Maybe we just do BribeWell, and simultaneously run a secret market for how much money we could get paid if we revealed our transactions, allowing us to “cash-out” when we see a high enough impact opportunity (bribing AGI for example).
New Alignment Agenda—Make AI Bribable.